Sala Bolognese

On the coat of arms of Sala Bolognese there is a cross, and there should not be. The arms, adopted in 1848, take up those of the Sala, the Bolognese family that held the place, and they are canting arms: the original figure is an axle, that is the fixed shaft of a cart onto which the wheels are fitted, and sala was the old synonym for axle. The axle has its central part wider, doubled in width, with two holes for fitting it into the bed of the cart. Only, the blazon said pale doubled, and the official draughtsman understood doubled in height: so the piece of cart became a cross with an upright longer than usual. A misunderstanding of a single word, fixed by decree and carried about on the gonfalon: the comune presents itself with the tool that gives it its name, drawn by someone who had not grasped which tool it was.

The rest of the territory speaks of water, beginning with the names: the town hall is at Padulle, which comes from the marshes, and one hamlet is called Bagno di Piano. Over the Reno the arched bridge was built in 1883 to trade more easily with the Cento district and the route to the Po; in 1925 the Bagnetto went up, a pumping station that feeds the water of the Reno into the collector of the low waters, and which today is looked at as architecture of those years too. In the Dosolo area the expansion basin, that is the space where the river can spread without doing damage, has become a place to watch water birds from camouflaged points. In the hamlet of Sala stands the Romanesque pieve of 1096, and its marble altar table almost certainly comes from a Roman temple.